Selling that first novel

[deborahjross]

Jim Hines has posted the results of his survey about first novel sales. Some of the results are no-brainers, like the genres (fantasy and romance are more common than mainstream, yup) and most first sold novels are submitted to an agent, who sells it or submitted directly to a publisher (as opposed to self-published).



For me, the most interesting graph comes fairly far down in the article: How Sold By Decade. In the 1980s, most first sales were direct to publisher, then through agent (about 3/4 of the number of direct sales). By the 1990s, however, the relationship was reversed, with a small number going to small press. In the 2000s, the agent sales outnumber the direct to publisher sales by about 3 to 1 and small press sales, while still relatively insignificant, have roughly doubled. Epublishing isn't yet on the chart.

Times have indeed changed.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I would also like to see a breakdown-by-decade of who did a postgrad degree in creative writing before selling their first novel, who studied at a lower level, who joined a critiqueing group and shared their book around, and who just went the ivory-tower route, wrote it and submitted it and sold it without showing it to anyone else at all. There too, I think the model has changed radically.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

How do you see it has changed over the last few decades?

(asks one who never took any of those classes, but did work her butt off in a peer-critique group).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

My impression is that there's been a steady shift from ivory-tower through peer-group critiqueing to some variety of formal coursework - helped of course by the explosion of offered courses (at least in the UK: there were two that I know of in the '70s, and now every college has a creative-writing class of some description) and the internet. Certainly I think very few manuscripts go out these days without have passed through beta-reading of some description. It's become the standard model. I think I am the last generation for whom it was actually true that writing is a lonely business; these days it's all about the sharing.